Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1958-1959 — Page 52

successive photographs of the areas that the tolerated squatter areas are not increasing in size. At the same time a survey is being made of all squatter structures, both to provide a further check on the construc- tion of new illegal huts as well as to provide more accurate statistics on the number of squatters remaining.

CHAPTER IX

FINANCE

119. Site permit fees in cottage areas were fixed in 1952 at an arbitrary low figure. These fees were increased on the 1st April, 1956 to the maximum amount it was considered that permittees could afford to pay and the revenue from permit fees as well as rents for Government- owned cottages now covers about two-thirds of the annually recurrent costs, but does not provide for the recovery of any part of the original capital expenditure of the areas. On 1st April, 1959, 2,157 cottages were owned by Government; 437 of these were built or purchased by Govern- ment and the remainder were gifts from the voluntary agencies that had built them. These cottages are maintained by the Department and rented to settlers at $10 or $15 a month, according to the site of the cottage. 120. The rent for a standard room of 120 square feet in the resettle- ment estates was fixed at $14 a month in 1954, when the first multi- storey buildings were under construction. This figure was calculated to cover all annually recurrent costs and to provide for the recovery in forty years, with interest at three and a half per cent, of the original capital cost including the value of the land at half the upset price.

121. The cost of construction, including site formation and piling, of a seven-storey block containing 432 rooms each of 120 square feet, was taken as $780,000 or about $1,806 a room, and to this figure was added the sum of $230,000 for the site of 23,000 square feet, and $15,600 for supervision by the Public Works Department (2% of the cost of construction) making a total of $1,025,600 or $2,375 a room. On the basis of these figures and on the assumption that annually recurrent costs would amount to $17,200 for each block, the rent for each room was assessed at $13 a month, to which $1 a month was added for water.

122. The rent of the self-contained flats, the first block of which was completed in June 1957, was calculated on the same basis, with the addition of rates, which are included in the rents payable by the

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